


Clucking Up

by junkshopdisco



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Non-Famous Harry, chicken based ficlet, chicken h/c is that a thing, doodle of a surface life verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-27 23:50:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13891743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junkshopdisco/pseuds/junkshopdisco
Summary: Nick has plans. Harry has a chicken, and thwarts them.Doodle of a Surface Life outtake. Reading Doodle first probably not necessary. All you need to know is Harry is a veterinary nurse and Nick is... fired from everything.





	Clucking Up

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so basically we all saw the pictures of Harry in his Gucci dressing gown tenderly cradling a chicken, [right?](https://twitter.com/TheHarryNews/status/970830521583525889) Right. And lordendsavior on Tumblr got an ask from an anon saying there should be a Doodle of a Surface Life outtake where Harry tends to a sickly chicken and Nick is fond and annoyed about it. And I thought yes. Yes there should. So this is that.

It’s a mid-week day in March. The snow has finally decided to do one and Nick sits, twiddling his thumbs – then googling the origin of the phrase _twiddling your thumbs_ – in his lounge. As the dictionary page loads, he has two thoughts: one, he really, really needs to get a job; two, he misses Harry. Their planned weekend together the week before last was snowed off, and though Nick enjoyed the pics Harry sent of himself red-nosed and snowflaked, it was no substitute for the real thing.

“You fancy a roadtrip?” Nick says.

Pig looks up from the leaf she was snuffling across the kitchen floor, which he takes as a yes. He throws some things into a bag and hauls it out to the car, weighing texting Harry to tell him to put the kettle on in approximately four hours versus surprising him. He decides on the latter, only half-picturing catching him unawares at the end of his shift and spinning him around while his colleagues look on with a mixture of disdain and amusement.

The drive to Middling Slaughter passes quickly enough, thanks to a mix Nick made himself of actual driving house, and he stretches in the driveway then lets himself in to the old cottage.

Pig starts barking and almost yanks his arm out of its socket in her eagerness to get through the door the second he’s turned the doorknob. 

“What the–”

Nick’s eyes are immediately drawn to the thing Pig is tugging him towards, the rug in front of the fireplace, where a couple of feathers are scattered. For a second he thinks a cushion has exploded in some kind of spontaneous interior design combustion, but if it has, it’s then congealed back into a solid form. 

A solid form that’s clucking in gentle but determined warning and has its beady eyes trained on him like one false move and his balls will be chicken feed.

“Ok,” Nick says, more to himself than either Pig or the chicken.

Gingerly, he edges around the perimeter of the room and into the kitchen, listening for the sounds of intruders and looking for evidence he’s been burgled, his heart lodged in his oesophagus. He grabs a wooden spoon to use as a weapon, second-guessing it immediately and wondering if the whisk would be more menacing.

The backdoor is still bolted. All the windows on the ground floor are shut and unbroken. There’s a strong scent of something which reminds Nick of that flat he used to live in, the fire escape to which was a popular mating spot for pigeons. He scans around the room. Next to the stove sits a cardboard box with Niall’s yoghurt logo on the side. It presumably used to be full of the straw that’s now freely distributed over the surrounding tiles, the chairs, and the dining table. 

Nick washes with a clammy yet calm kind of horror. He knew, deep down, that this day was coming, that one day Harry would go full country boy and bring home Sunday lunch still alive. He swallows. He can handle this. He can absolutely handle whatever it is people do to chickens to turn them from clucking, feathered things to the shrink-wrapped ones he sees in Waitrose. 

He sneaks back to the lounge and peers around the doorframe. The chicken has its eyes closed, like it’s enjoying a nice afternoon nap in the shard of sunlight streaming in through the curtains.

Fuck.

He’s vegan. Suddenly, irrevocably vegan. 

He texts Harry, deciding to start out neutral: 

_why is there a chicken in my lounge?_

His head reels through alternate explanations, like maybe it’s something people here do for Easter, some kind of weird egg hunt with real eggs laid free-range all over the house. 

Harry replies: 

_she’s in the lounge?? Is she ok???_

Nick takes a picture and sends it, captioned:

_living the life of fucking Riley, for now_

_I’m fine too btw, despite your best efforts to give me a poultry-related heart attack_

Pig tugs on her lead. Evidently she doesn’t share Nick’s new-found interest in veganism. “Give over,” Nick says, and for safety (and because he really, really can’t handle witnessing a chicken murder), he drags her through the kitchen and shuts her in the garden. 

When he gets back, the chicken’s nestled properly down inside itself, its feathers all fluffed up protectively under its beak. 

“Oh god, don’t be cute,” Nick says. Half-heartedly he starts writing a speech begging for her reprieve, pictures throwing himself on top of her wailing something convincing about taking the nuggets from the freezer instead.

His phone buzzes with a new text from Harry: 

_Her name’s Beryl fyi_

**Nick:**

_How are you going to kill her when you’ve named her??_

The typing dots never transition into any actual words and then Nick’s phone rings. 

“Beryl?!” Nick says, by way of a greeting. 

“Hey, my great-gran was named Beryl.”

“Did you roast her and all?”

Harry’s end of the line goes patchy with a staticy objection but Nick launches into it anyway.

“Look, I know I got no right to some kind of moral high ground here, but I just don’t think I can eat a chicken when I know what its name was and I’ve seen it napping in the lounge. I’m sorry, Harry, I just –”

“No one’s eating Beryl, Nick, what the fuck? She’s Niall’s best layer, she’s got a broken wing.” 

Nick peers at the chicken. He can’t believe he missed it, but there’s one of those bright pink bandages they give to dogs and children holding one wing in place against her side.

“I couldn’t leave her with Basil,” Harry says. “I thought you wouldn’t mind if she moved in for a bit.”  

And great, now Nick  _can’t_ mind because he’s too relieved she’s not destined for the fancy china. Housemates with a chicken. He grapples with it, abstractly.  “How long’s she staying?” Nick says.

“Couple of weeks.”

“A couple of–”

“Can you make some chicken noises for her? It’ll help her to heal if she feels close to the flock. Does she look hungry?”

“I – what?” 

“If she does, can you make her some porridge? She likes it runny – use water though not milk – and sprinkle some mealworms on the top. They’re in the fridge in a Tupperware next to that old kale.”

Nick clasps his forehead, overloaded with too much new information to do anything other than say, “So you coming over later, or what?”

“Was planning to. I made her a soothing playlist.” 

“Cool, ‘cos I got a surprise for you.” 

“Oh?” Harry says. “What is it?”

“I’m here,” Nick says, flatly adds, “surprise,” and hangs up.

 

Four hours later, they’re sat on the floor in front of the fire. Nick had big plans for tonight. Or not  _big_ , maybe, but medium-size ones involving a bottle of wine, sofa snuggling and idle groping. Instead, Beryl’s the one in Harry’s lap while he feeds her bits of carrot he chopped into meticulous pieces. He smooths her feathers. 

Beryl clucks approvingly.

Harry coos back at her.

Nick’s jealous of a chicken, but at least he’s one up on Pig, who’s been semi-permanently exiled to the bedroom and pacified with a rubber version. He wishes he had more phone signal so he could google things like  _what time do chickens go to bed?_  and  _do broken chickens really heal faster when you play them Fleetwood Mac b-sides?_ but he settles for downing the remainder of his wine and then trying to balance a stray feather on the end of his nose.  

Eventually, Harry decides Beryl has had enough excitement for one day and tucks her back into the box in the kitchen. He fluffs the straw around her, chattering to her about how it’s not a good idea to go wandering about at night because she might bash into the furniture and hurt herself further. 

Nick leans on the wall with his wine, watching as Harry rests back on his heels, tugging at his lip, humming to her and waiting for her to fall asleep.  

It’s ridiculously endearing. 

So endearing that when she drifts off and Harry comes over, even though he smells faintly of straw and chicken, Nick doesn’t protest at being sagged against. 

“She gonna be alright?” Nick asks, very quietly so as not to wake her. 

“Yeah,” Harry says. “Sorry I ruined your surprise.” 

Nick tucks a strand of his hair behind his ear. “You must be tired,” he says, “ _clucked up_  was sitting right there.”   

Harry snorts, looks up at him, and he definitely  _is_  tired, that specific way he gets when he cares so much about things.

“You want to go up to roost?”

“That is an egg-cellent suggestion,” Harry says. 

Nick’s tempted to kick him out just for that, but he doesn’t, obviously. 

 


End file.
